David Is Blessed By God’s Forgiveness

David begins with this proclamation, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgive, whose sin is covered, whom God imputes no iniquity and whose spririt is guileless. The word blessed you already know mean happy and to be envied. Here we would read it, “Oh, the happiness of the forgiven!”

David uses three words to describe his and our sin:

(1) transgression from the Hebrew, פֶּשַׁע p̱eša‘; which means a revolt,  rebellion, sin, transgression, trespass.
(2) sin is ḥăṭâ’â; which is an offence, it is the missing God’s way; and
(3) iniquity which comes from  עָוֹן ‘âôn; or עָווֹן ‘avown  aw-vone; from which means perversity, moral evil, fault, iniquity, mischief, distortion, and crookedness.

David uses no euphemisms to minimize the depth of sin. He doesn’t say, “Oh, sorry, I guess I made a mistake” or that terrible phrase, “My bad.” Well David doesn’t tell God, “My Bad.” No, he makes it clear what sin really is. David rebelled against God. He missed God’s way because he walked away from God’s way and he committed the worst kind of  iniquity. What he did was perverse and evil in the sight of God and man.

But this Psalms is not about sin and its repugnance to God, it is about sin and its forgiveness by God.

David now uses three words that deal with forgiveness.

(1) forgiven, this is the Hebrew word, “נָשָׂא nâśâ’; it literally means to lift and here it would mean that God has lifted David’s burden, he guilt and sin, away. He says that his sin has been
(2) covered. This is כָּסָה ḵâsâ and it means covering the offense from sight and
(3) imputeth not. חָשַׁב ḥâšaḇ, to be released legally from a debt.

For David this state of forgiveness is a blessing. He is blessed because God covered his sin and released him from its full spiritual accounting. “Psalms 32:1 Blessed is the person whose transgression is forgiven,”

David can appreciate his now blessed state because he had been in just the opposite state, a condition of cursedness, for a year while he tried to ignore his own guilt and hide his sin from God.

In vss. 3-4 we can see his state before he was forgiven. Psalms 32:3-4, he says, "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer."

He was affected physically by his refusal to deal with his sin, he seemed to feel old and ached in his bones. Because of that pain, he roared or groaned all day long. Day and night felt like God chastising him it was as if God was pressing him down with his hand. He felt dried up like a man in the midst of a drought.

Finding The Blessing of Forgiveness

If you are a child of God, you can’t be happy, you can’t be blessed if you sin and refuse to seek God’s forgiveness through confession of that sin. David tried and it broke him. The truth is that unconfessed sin will break us all.

Charles Spurgeon said this, “God does not permit His children to sin successfully.”

John Donne wrote, “Sin is a serpent, and he that covers sin does but keep it warm, that it may sting the more fiercely, and disperse the venom and malignity thereof the more effectually.”

God won’t let his children dwell in sin. We will feel the pressure of his chastening hand upon our life. Unconfronted, hidden sin in our life, separates us from God.

This is what Isiah said, in Isaiah 59:1-2 "Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:  But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Sin separates us from our Heavenly Father and because He is a loving father, then he will do that which will bring us back to His love, back to himself and back to being blessed.

As long as we choose sin instead of God way then we will suffer its consequences and the chastisement it brings.

David learned the painful lesson of unconfessed sin and the joy of forgiveness. The apostle John wrote his first epistle with this same lesson as its theme.

1 John 1:6-10 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

If you are a child of God and have unconfessed sin that you are ignoring or refusing to deal with then know this. God already knows you have sinned, that sin is not hidden from Him and he will not be allow you to ignore or deny it. Don’t dwell in the misery of being separated from the God who loves you by your sin. Don’t sink into the joyless life of someone who is living in the shadows of sin instead of stepping into the sunshine of God’s great forgiveness.

Don’t dwell in the misery of separation from the God because of your unconfessed sin. Don’t sink into a joyless life, shuffling in the shadows of sin instead of stepping in the sunshine of God’s shining forgiveness. Seek the blessedness of forgiveness now. - Pastor Kris Minefee